Top 5 Wednesday: My Most Unlikeable Characters

I haven’t participated in Top 5 Wednesday for a while, so I thought that this week’s topic would be a wonderful way to step back into it. I always enjoy participating in weekly memes like this one, especially when they offer such interesting topics!

This week’s topic is: most unlikable characters. Now, this doesn’t mean villains or characters that are intentionally meant to be unlikable, but simply protagonists or secondary characters that you don’t particularly like.

To be honest, this was kind of a tough topic, because I tend to fall in love with so many characters! Haha.

5. The entire cast from The Magicians by Lev Grossman

When I initially posted my review for The Magicians, I received a comment telling me that Quentin — the book’s protagonist — was intentionally portrayed to be unlikable. And I really agree because I did not like his character. However, I don’t think that the rest of the characters are meant to be written this way and they are still quite unlikable… actually they are perhaps the worst group of characters that I have ever read about! There are probably some of you out there that really enjoy reading about them (which is perfectly fine), but unfortunately I am not one of those people, sorry! Actually, to be 100% honest with you, if these characters really existed in our world I would make a conscious effort to stay far, far, FAR AWAY from them, because they are not good people and I don’t see very many redeeming qualities from any of them.

4. Dinah from Queen of Hearts by Colleen Oakes

I have yet to post my review of Queen of Hearts, but I can tell you now that I don’t particularly like the protagonist, Dinah. This is really unfortunate, because I was hoping to fall in love with Dinah as I did Regina from Once Upon A Time (yes, I realise that she wasn’t the Queen of Hearts, but their stories were somewhat similar). However, the author didn’t allow the character to possess a lot of depth, and instead portrayed her as a whiny, complaining and jealous teenager desperate for her father’s attention. This, unfortunately, made her extremely unlikable and I found it difficult to cheer for her throughout her story. Perhaps if Colleen Oakes had allowed for a little more depth for her protagonist then Dinah would have been a much more intriguing and likable character from the beginning.

3. Tamlin from A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J. Maas

The more and more that I analyse this book in my head makes me realise how much I truly despise Tamlin. Yes, the second book definitely portrays him a lot more negatively than the first, but even then I didn’t really see what Feyre saw in him. There was nothing particularly special about him. The fact that he controlled her, almost seemed constantly angry with her, physically hurt her, mentally scarred her, and treated her like dirt are only a couple of the reasons that I don’t like him at all. Then, we can point out how he has treated his so-called “best friend” Lucien so far as well. And his character only grew worse in the second book… and I can’t even imagine how terrible he is going to become in the next one. *shivers* Seriously, this character gets NO LOVE from me.

2. Alina Starkov from The Grisha Trilogy by Leigh Bardugo

I have expressed time and time again that despite my extremely intense love for Bardugo’s world building, I have little patience for Alina Starkov, the trilogy’s protagonist. Throughout the entire series she has annoyed me constantly. Why? Well, because Alina is meant to be the saviour and a potential new queen and someone who will destroy the world’s deadliest enemy, and yet she spends the majority of the story complaining about the responsibility and worrying about her love life. Also, a lot of the time her actions were quite selfish. It took me a lot longer to read the trilogy, simply because she annoyed me so damn much. I wanted a protagonist that didn’t worry about her teenage love life, but instead fought for her people. The author tried to portray her that way, but it came across a lot more like telling rather than showing. *sigh* This character is definitely one of my most unlikable ones.

1. Catelyn Stark from A Game of Thrones by George R. R. Martin

Is this an incredibly obvious choice? I know that a lot of people grow increasingly frustrated with Catelyn throughout the series — and I am definitely one of them! From the way she treated Jon, to letting her only daughters go to King’s Landing, to leaving her youngest sons (one now unable to walk) behind in order to fight her eldest son’s battles, she grew more and more on my nerves as I read on. A part of me kind of understands her reasoning for some of the points above, and I do not think that George R. R. Martin intentionally wrote her to be so damn annoying, but I can’t help but name her my most unlikable character. (And, to demonstrate my annoyance even more, whenever I came up to her chapter whilst reading this series, I always found myself sighing and wanted to skip it.)

Who are your most unlikable characters? Do you agree or disagree with any of the above?

16 thoughts on “Top 5 Wednesday: My Most Unlikeable Characters”

I also did not like Catelyn Stark too much, both on the books and the tv series. 🙂
I do love Alina, but I get what you mean. I think Leigh learned from that and made such badass female characters on Six of Crows. :p

Yes, I didn’t like her in the television series, either! And I’m really looking forward to reading Six of Crows, so it makes me even more excited to read it knowing that she has written some awesome badass female characters!

The only one of these I’ve read is ACTOR and even though I wasn’t a fan of the book in general I really disliked Tamlin too and pretty much everyone except Lucien 😂 But Tamlin’s victim blaming and controlling attitude towards Feyre made me super angry.

I liked Tamlin the first time I read it but I re-read it before ACOMAF came out and I disliked him so much the second time around, him and Feyre never really have a proper conversation or become friends there love was just a bit to fast and he could have saved us so much drama if he wasn’t such an idiot at times.

I haven’t read Game of Thrones yet but I hated Caitlyn in the TV show leaving her children and splitting them up was just ridiculous and how she treats Jon is horrible 😦

I agree with The Magicians cast.. It was only my stubbornness that enable me to finish the first book… It was really a let down. And the characters are sooo confusing, it’s as if they really don’t have identity…

Yes! I was exactly the same way when I read The Magicians — it was such a struggle, but I really wanted to know whether Quentin and his group of friends were ever able to redeem themselves. Boy, was I disappointed! I was definitely happy to finish that one…

I agree. The plot jumped around A LOT, and it annoyed me so much. Plus, there was so many strange scenes that I think the author added just for shock value or to be different… unfortunately, they just came across as weird choices.

About Madeline

My name is Madeline and I am a twenty-two year old book blogger and aspiring author from Australia. When I am not blogging, reading or writing, I am most likely studying for a university degree, reading comics or binge-watching a number of television series.